People

Most of the time I really love people. I love being around them, meeting new people, hanging out with my friends...just all of it.

Recently though, I finally began to appreciate how much I enjoy a large amount of alone time. As I've told some of my friends, I love and need to be around other people 95% of the time. However there's that other 5% that I rarely get at this point in my life. Thankfully this spring break I had an apartment to myself and plenty of friends that I hadn't seen enough of in the past few months. And I think it fulfilled about 2% of this year's quota of alone time. I spent some time with a lot of different friends who I hadn't seen in awhile and it was great! I got to meet some new friends as well.

It's always interesting making new friends. Especially when drinking. It always starts off quick and fast paced and always revolves around the way you met, in this case, when you're both drinking. I've realized lately that I hate that. Trust me. I've met some of my best friends whilst drinking, but I've also made acquaintances better friends through drinking, and even ruined a few relationships from drinking. Some people have weathered the storm and others I've pushed to the wayside and could care less about at this point. I've found that my closest friends are the ones that I slowly got to know and didn't spend a ton of time hanging out in the beginning of our friendship. I've been finding different levels of friendship through everyone and have really enjoyed it.

I've also realized that I don't think I truly have a "best friend." There's not really that one friend that I can turn to for any problem or issue I have. And this I don't know if I like or not. Every time I think I've found a best friend in the past it has just turned out poorly. Either something bad happens or I push away because I don't like them. But as it turns out I have pretty large group of best friends in my opinion. It's honestly been pretty strange how I've found my "true" friends, but I love every one of them. Many of them have been there for me when I needed them and have been extremely helpful. And then there are those who I thought were great friends who simply failed the challenge of being a truly good friend to me.

But maybe that comes from how much I've changed since college. I know who I was in high school: involved in everything, constantly going, and thriving on being busy. In college I'm still busy and constantly going, but it just feels more laid back because I can do stuff on my own time. And that changed me. I've always been a laid back and relaxed person, but when I first got to college it was a time to party and explore. I met some good people, some bad people, and some people I thought were great friends. As I traversed college I had some high points and some low points, but I've made it through the low points and finally returned to my laid back attitude, whereas some of my "good" friends have not changed at all. And at this point I find it pathetic. I still enjoy going out and love meeting new people, but my "party personality" (which they have clearly not lost) shows up at times that are few and far between. And I LOVE that.

The people I've been meeting seem to be more genuine, real, and adult. Maybe I'm just maturing faster than others. Or maybe I just had all my college experiences in a much more condensed period of time. I'm not really sure. The problem used to be that I would try and hold onto those "party" friends and that just brought me down. So I stopped caring about them (mainly because they stopped caring about me) and I found friends who do truly care and who I love in return. It has been a year of great times so far and many great new friends that I believe I'll have for a long time. I don't really know where I want to go in the future, but I know I want to travel the world and take in as many new cultures as I can.

Maybe I'll live in Madison. Maybe it'll be Boston. Hell, it could even be somewhere in Europe. I just want to live my life to the fullest.